Myth Board Game First Impressions

Myth is a cool-looking, fantasy miniatures game.

How does it compare to all the other cool-looking, fantasy miniatures games?

Myth is a fully co-operative fantasy game. Players take on the role of one of 5 different heroes working together to defeat the Darkness. Each hero has a different skill set which represented by a unique deck of cards. Players spend Action Points by using cards. Once a certain amount of Action Points have been spent the Darkness fights back by activating monster lairs, spawning monster captains and eventually the Boss.

A complete game in Myth is called a Story. Each Story is played over three Acts. Acts can be played sequentially, or can be split up over three different game sessions.

Players’ avatars within a Story are called Heroes. Myth Heroes are clothed in immense power, able to reave all but the mightiest foes. However, this power must be balanced lest the Darkness take too much notice. Players must weigh their actions against the Threat each will bring, with the consequences of awakening more evil and bringing doom on the party’s endeavours. And be careful they must, as the Darkness is formidable and eager to snatch glory from the valiant.

Heroes are controlled through an intuitive Hero Deck (videos for each Hero can be found in the Game Play Videos section below). Each deck plays uniquely and allows players more freedom of action and the ability to truly impact the Story each and every Act. Yet, cooperation is the key to victory and bloody fortune. Players must communicate, interact, and assist each other or surely the Darkness will cover all.

Myth Game Play

Our band of adventurers went up against a Horde of Grubbers and Muckers… Orc looking creatures. Our goal was to face them in combat, destroy their spawning point and finish them all off.

The adventurers all had different names but we were essentially a Rogue (me), Wizard, Ranger, Soldier and… Tree Man?

I went in to combat armed with my Sharpened Butter Knife… Luckily, later on, I managed to buy a Mace with Gold I found. I also had a Dirty Blanket which is pretty disgusting, although it helped me stay hidden.

Whenever we kill one of the bad guys we become a bigger threat in their eyes. These particular bad guys head towards the Hero who is the most threatening if they can’t make their mind up who that is thy go towards the nearest one.

Fate comes into play during our fights. Occasionally if things go my way my threat won’t increase when I make a kill which can be frustrating as I’m quite adept at dodging attacks… If no one attacks me I can’t show off my skills!

Although we all have a lot of skills, if we do too much in a short period of time the Darkness will overcome the enemy and call them to arms.

But, We were victorious!

Summary

At the time of playing Myth, I thought it was a standard Dungeon Crawl type game…

But the more I thought about it afterwards there was quite a bit of the game I liked a lot.

Missions

There are plenty of mission cards. You can play one on its own or a few to make a campaign. You can also upgrade a character’s equipment and deck of action cards for a continuous story.

Fate Dice

When rolling your D10s to hit you also roll a number of fate dice. These dice have different symbols on and they activate your abilities. For example, my Brigand reduced the threat by 1 for each of a certain symbol I rolled, meaning I was rarely attacked.

Also, it’s fun to roll a lot of dice.

Card Play

You have 4 slots for cards and 5 cards in hand. Most of the cards you play move the Darkness track up (more on that in a bit) so you have to work together to balance this track vs playing actions.

4 slots are actually quite restricting too, even though you only have 5 cards. I would use 1 for extra movement, 1 for an attack and 1 for an ability leaving only one slot to play my defensive ‘dodge’ type cards.

The cards and abilities have a decreasing scale of usefulness depending on how far you’ve moved which was really cool and quite thematic.

Bad Guy Intelligence

These Orc guys swarm. They’re intelligent enough to position themselves so they can get as many different units around you as possible. Skeletons, on the other hand, walk forward and stop when they can’t move. Again, quite thematic.

Threat

You gain Threats through killing enemies and other actions. This is one stat that determines the tiebreaker when moving the game-controlled enemy pieces. The Tank-type soldier can increase his Threat to pull enemies whereas my weak Brigand and reduce it. Theme.

Darkness

I mentioned the Darkness track moves up with player actions and it could mean enemies activating at some point during the player’s turn. This means movement could be wasted, advantages can be lost and extra guys can be spawned.

It’s something else to keep your eye on.

Downsides

If you don’t draw an attack card, you can’t attack. I THINK you have a basic attack action you can use but we didn’t play it that way the first time. I haven’t read the rulebook to check.

Some cool stuff is not in the base box. It’s either a Kickstarter exclusive or an extra add-on.

Cost. With so much good stuff costing extra on top of an already pricey game, it can get expensive quickly.

But, even with these downsides, it’s a fun game with some interesting, thematic mechanics.

Update September 2022

First up, the rulebook is awful, I’ll just get that out the way.

I ended up buying Myth but got screwed BIG TIME by the Kickstarter that failed to deliver. 6 years later and I’m still waiting for most of it. The original company went bankrupt and has now been taken over by a different, better company. They’re doing what they can!

They have some but not all of the original content that they are shipping out, no idea how much of the stuff I paid for I’ll get. If it was never in the warehouse to begin with, they can’t send it.

At the time of backing, I didn’t have much money and I wasn’t earning a lot, it was a risk and probably stupid to back it and boy was I punished for it!

They are 3D printing minis from the second Myth Kickstarter (the one I backed) and will send them out when ready. This is all at their own expense so I can’t complain about the time it’s taking really. But 6 years after the Kickstarter was due to deliver and 7 years after I backed it, it will all go straight on eBay for next to nothing when it arrives.

Jesta ThaRogue